An overwhelmingly number of Buckeye lawmakers, virtually all them Republican, voted last Tuesday to fast forward a proposal to the fall ballot that would monkey-wrench an amendment that would carve out real estate in the Ohio Constitution for ten commercial marijuana growers in the same way four casino owners got their real estate in 2009, by winning a statewide vote.

Dysfunctional Defenders

There’s suddenly an out cry from certain quarters to protect the Ohio Constitution from certain invasive interest groups whose causes are deemed too crass to be in the people’s founding operations manual. Long overdue, polls show an […]

This is the true story of how John Kasich and JobsOhio got one of its own inaugural board members fired and left Ohio taxpayers with giving the company an $8 million subsidy to boast the stock price to benefit a Swedish billionaire.

In 2011, first term Governor John Kasich was desperate to change the subject. In the first year of his term, Kasich already had approval ratings in the mid-30s after picking a fight he couldn’t win against working families with SB 5, a bill that would have essentially eliminated the right of police officers, firefighters, teachers, and government workers […]

John Kasich headlined the Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s 2014 year end review in downtown Columbus on Thursday. The governor’s message and delivery were virtually identical to last year. From keeping Ohio’s fiscal house in order to creating a climate for job creation, Gov. Kasich was swooned over by Senate President Keith Faber, who will return in that role for the next two years, and House Speaker Bill Batchelder, who first entered the legislature in 1968 and whose final day arrives Dec. 31.

Now on the long list of possible GOP presidential hopefuls for 2016, Gov. Kasich told a ballroom full of […]

Not only is Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s private and secret job creating engine very likely unconstitutional, a conclusion experts predict the Ohio Supreme Court would reach if a case challenging Kasich’s creature ever reaches it, but it apparently can’t create many jobs either.

Two new reports detailing Ohio’s poor job creation performance show the Wizard of Westerville’s so-called “Ohio Miracle” is mostly a self-basting, feel-good illusion. Many workers are still waiting for Kasich’s promised land of jobs galore to materialize in their lifetime.

A statewide meeting organized by the Ohio Liberty Coalition drew about 300 people to a church in Lewis Center, Ohio, Saturday. Speakers at the Reload 4 Liberty 2014! event discussed the Heartbeat Bill, a Right to Work ballot initiative and a strategy for winning races they say are ripe for picking. They also spoke on camera about Kasich, JobsOhio and RTW.

Ted Stevenot, who failed to qualify for the Republican primary ballot earlier this year, spoke about his precinct project. Stevenot has emerged as an activist who, despite his inability to challenge first-term incumbent Republican Gov. John R. Kasich in […]

By all real measures used by actual economists, Ohio’s job growth stalled two years ago – right about the time that JobOhio, Kasich’s non-transparent and unconstitutional money hole, started handling economic development for the state.

While the U.S. has regained all of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, economists calculate that Ohio is still down 139,900 jobs from our pre-recession peak. Not surprising since Ohio’s job growth has lagged the U.S. average for almost 20 months in a row.

But Kasich isn’t going to let facts get in the way of him continuing to push his Ohio Miracle story. Especially not […]

When John Kasich and Mark Kvamme created JobsOhio back in 2011, they promised us the world! JobsOhio would be given all of Ohio’s liquor profits for 25 years, over six billion dollars in total, and it would be freed from the burden and constraint of government oversight, public record disclosure and public audits. JobsOhio would then be able to move at the “speed of business” to kick the collective asses of all of our neighboring states, and the rest of the country, stimulating job growth and getting Ohioans back to work after the recession that started in 2007.

Throughout the time that the various JobsOhio cases have been pending, I have tried to stay focused on the legal issues and avoided making disparaging comments on the various office holders involved in this monstrosity. I focused on the legal issues, primarily standing.

This month the Ohio Supreme Court once again prevented the case from being determined on the merits. This time it found that the constitutionality issue could not be brought by a declaratory judgment under the public rights standing doctrine. They stated that a declaratory judgment action is not the proper way to bring the case and that […]

There is little doubt, in our view, that had a court been permitted to review the merits of the claims that JobsOhio violates the Ohio Constitution, the court would have ruled the centerpiece of the Kasich Administration unconstitutional. We won’t get into why here; just trust us, or read this […]

Columbus CEO magazine recently interviewed Mark Kvamme, the California venture capitalist who helped design and implement JobsOhio, John Kasich’s signature economic development initiative. Mixed in among the questions about his super-exciting personal life and his fantastic investments, was a question about his work with Governor Kasich:

Working with the governor on JobsOhio, what do you think about the way the organization operates now and its prospects for the future?

Kvamme provides a long, detailed and well-reasoned response that sounds like it came straight from the Kasich press shop. Unfortunately, it’s almost entirely untrue.

According to Charity Watch, a group that analyzes the financial information and spending of non-profits, the most highly efficient and effective organizations should spend at least 75% of their expenses on program costs that go toward the organization’s mission, with only 25% going to administrative costs. Organizations that spend only 60% on program costs are considered satisfactory, and given a C rating. Anything lower than that, and the non-profits are given an unsatisfactory rating.

Charity Navigator uses a similar rating system for non-profits. “We believe that those spending less than a third of their budget on program expenses […]